Issue #137: Cooking the Pantry
So Much Food to Use Up, So Little Time. A Recipe Roundup
Between our lake house and our Manhattan apartment, I’ve got three refrigerators and three freezers worth of food to try to use up in about as many weeks before we close on and move to our new home in New Hampshire. Then there are all the open bottles and bags in the cupboards and pantry that our movers won’t touch. Anything we don’t consume we must move ourselves. We will have to make several trips.
Although for weeks I’ve been trying to only cook things from the freezer—a whole chicken from my favorite farm upstate, a couple of beautiful skate wings from the Union Square Greenmarket I froze before I could get to them, some chocolate tart dough and whipped ganache Laurent Gras left for me to use after a dinner in 2022—I feel like I’m treading water, food wise.
To be honest, that feeling isn’t just about the ingredients before me. After 30 years of living in the center of Manhattan, we are moving to rural New Hampshire. Plainfield, to be exact. I’ve never lived in the country before. I grew up in a Jewish ghetto of sorts in north Toronto. I took the subway to high school. The lake house in Ithaca is about as rural as I’ve ever been, and the longest stretch I stayed there was about ten days. It helped that it was in the center of wine country and about four miles from a Chinese grocer.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious about how I will survive in a rural setting, even though I’m excited to give it a go. Most of that anxiety is about where I will shop for food. In about 7 minutes from our apartment in Manhattan—which is for sale, by the way, please consider buying it—I can walk to Kalustyan’s, where you really can find just about any spice or comestible on earth. It’s surrounded by Indian grocery stores. Even closer is the Union Square Greenmarket. A 12-minute stroll down Third Avenue gets you to H-Mart and now Wegman’s—where they are flying in fish from Tokyo three times a week. A little farther down and you are in Chinatown.
Last week, after some meetings at our soon-to-be-new house, we scoped out our new neighborhood for food shopping. I wanted to see what was available in the middle of winter, before farmers markets in the area were flush with local produce. Although the shelves had been picked over because of an impending snow storm—something I assumed only happened in NYC, where, due to limited storage space and an abundance of convenience options people have little food on hand—the local Hannaford and Shaw’s were impressively large. I was happy to see a display case of Maine seafood in the former. The cheap price of butter at the latter gave me pause.
More thrillingly, I found a small Chinese grocer, an Indian grocer, and a respectable coffee shop, all less than 15 minutes from our house. Phew, I thought, I can get fresh garlic chives, whole-grain atta flour, and caffeinated beans without having to resort to mail order.
Not that I’ll need anything for months (years?), before I use up what I’m bringing with me. But it’s good to know that we won’t starve once we settle into our new New Hampshire life. Look forward to future dispatches from the Upper Valley.
In the meantime, while I contemplate what I can use up to make for dinner tonight, I thought I’d round up some of my favorite pantry dishes from issues past. These are “recipes” I turn to again and again because they morph easily to incorporate different ingredients. I put recipes in quotation marks because they are really more like techniques you can use when you’ve got things in the fridge or freezer you don’t know what to do with, which I have right now aplenty.
Granola
Issue #5 I use this basic granola recipe to use up flakes of various grains, sourdough starter discard, seeds, nuts, dried fruit, other cereals (including other granolas) I don’t love but don’t want to throw away, even cookies I chop into little bits and mix in.
Pasta, Italian-style
Issue #23 With a package of pasta, some aromatics, an open bottle of wine, some stock, cooked meat and/or roasted vegetables, you’ve got an Italian-style pasta that’s ready for prime time. This is what I’ll end up making for dinner tonight.
Chicken Pot Pie
Issue #39 Nate loves anything in pot pie form. That chicken from my freezer, which I dressed in black truffles on New Year’s Eve, made a delicious pot pie a couple of days later.
Quiche
Issue #56 And oldie but a goodie. Some frozen smoked salmon, bits of lobster or shrimp, ham, cheese, vegetables, they all become fancy and French when baked in the custard of a quiche.
Fromage Fort
Issue #74 Heels of old cheese I just can’t throw away get blended with white wine, and garlic to make this versatile and delicious spread, in the style of Jacques Pépin’s dad.
Hash
Issue #75 Chop up your vegetables, your leftover meats, potatoes, frozen corn, peas, you name it, and they become hash. #putaneggonit.
Panettone Bread Pudding
Issue #83 Would you believe I found a piece of panettone saved in the freezer from Christmas 2021! This pudding is its destiny.
Fried Rice
Issue #99 Probably my favorite use for cooked meat, vegetables, even leftover Chinese, Korean, or Thai food is fried rice. I make it almost once a week.
Treats for the Dog
Issue #47 Turns out dogs aren’t only good because they love you unconditionally. They area also excellent ways to use up foods you cannot otherwise consume. (Who needs an expensive compost machine when you’ve got a pooch?) I stir bacon bits and jerky chips into dog biscuits or chop things up as toppers for Milo’s kibble. Cheese rinds, leftover meat, bacon grease, the juice from tinned fish, turn her ordinary dog food into a special treat. Be sure to check with Google that whatever you have is okay for dogs (no onions, no grapes or raisins, no chocolate, for example).
Happy cooking. Next week’s issue will be sent from India.